PoV: Dangerous ground to regulate social media

It’s one thing to upset a special interest group. It’s another to turn many millions of people against you.

The Trudeau Liberals raised the ire of progressives when they backed away from electoral reform. They faced stiff opposition from small business groups when they started monkeying around with tax issues.

But all of this will look like small potatoes if they try to clamp down on what people get up to on social media platforms, such as Facebook.

The Liberals have been ever so softly publicly toying with the notion of somehow regulating social media. If they proceed with this, the blowback will be immense.

“Trudeau has warned social networking giant Facebook it needs to fix its ‘fake news’ problems or face stronger regulations from Ottawa,” the Toronto Star reported earlier this month.

“Trudeau told Facebook chief operating office Sheryl Sandberg in November he was concerned the company wasn’t doing enough to stop the spread of misleading information on their platform.”

We’d be curious to learn Trudeau’s working definition of “fake news.” So far, his office has declined to offer one up.

Karina Gould, the Liberal minister of democratic institutions, is keeping this ball in the air. “Are we going to see something more robust in the next six months?” she said to CBC concerning self-regulation on the part of social media giants. “If we don’t see something more robust in the next six months, then we need to take action.”

This is dangerous territory. The government has no business regulating what is and isn’t “truth” online.

Are there people and companies and those much-discussed bots out there online, posting things that just aren’t true? Sure.

Does this sometimes mislead and confuse others? No doubt. Would it be ideal if this didn’t happen? Sure.

Is this the end of the world? Of course not. Does the government need to wade in and do something about it? Absolutely not.

Of all the problems out there right now, for the Liberals to try to ban whatever fits their definition of fake news is a waste of resources, political capital and a slippery slope to head down.

Stick to the real issues. The people on social media will be just fine.